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On original fic and fanfic
So, re: the debate going around about whether AO3 should allow original stuff in with the fanworks:
There are some people who want to keep a wall between original and fan fiction, and want to keep AO3 limited to fan writers. And I can see their point - I, too, am far less likely to read something if it's original: it's harder work to read, less likely to be id-tastic, when I'm in the mood for fanwork I don't want original, and either the average quality of original fic is less, or I simply don't have good enough filters for finding the good stuff with original as compared to fan work. Plus, many original writing communities are not only very different in culture to fanwriting communities, some of them are openly hostile to fanwriting, or to some of the values that my particular fanwriting community espouses.
The problem I have with that viewpoint is that the separation between original and fan work *isn't* a wall. It is, at best, a long sloping gradient with something on it that might be an attempt at a wall that has fallen over in places and wasn't very straight to begin with (and has only been there for a paltry few decades anyway.) The boundary between original and fan work is not a hard boundary. People have brought up historical RPF several times already, but as far as I'm concerned, it's only the tip of the iceberg.
I write stuff that is definitely fanfiction. I write stuff that is definitely original fiction. And I write stuff that, um, I have no bloody idea if it's one or the other.
And the thing that attracted me, as an author, to AO3, is that it's one archive where I don't have to worry if my fanwork is "enough" for it. Is it slashy enough, or too slashy? Shippy enough, or too shippy? Too porny or not porny enough? Too long or too short, not canonical enough, not finished enough, too crossovery, too script-y or meta-y or poem-y to be a proper story, not angsty enough, too much or not enough... on AO3 I can just put everything up, as a proper archive, without having to stress over categories.
I would love if "not fan-fic-y enough" was one of those categories I didn't have to worry about on AO3. And since - *for me* - the most important role of AO3 is to be an archive for fanwriters to universally preserve and organize their work, I want all the edge cases to be allowed; if that means blanket allowing original fiction (and I suspect it does), then so be it. I would, however, support a restriction that every author account must have at least one definite fanwork uploaded, to preserve the archive as primarily fannish and to filter out people who are hostile to fanfic culture. And a rule that any original work hosted on AO3 must allow derivative work.
And, sheerly out of curiosity (and not intended to be anyone's opinion on what should or shouldn't get posted at AO3): Here is a poll about some of those "edge" cases. What do you think, fandom-at-large? Original or fanwork? (And no, you don't get tickyboxes or third options. You must make a judgement! Like archives always make me do!)
Historical RPF about dead people!
Non-historical RPF about living people!
Historical fic set in a specific place and time but with mostly-original characters (because the people I'm writing about went unrecorded by history!)
Fic set in the present with original characters, but all about their relationships with real celebrities, places, and/or current events!
A story set in fandom with characters who are all recognizeable fangirl achetypes!
A story based on a story my great-grandma wrote that was only ever published in a tiny edition!
A story based on something in my high school literary magazine!
Fic based on a friend's unpublished and unfinished original novel!
My original story that my friend pulished fic about before my story was finished!
A non-canon AU I wrote in my own original universe that uses fannish tropes like AMTDI or "five things that never happened"!
A story where my original characters meet fandom characters!
A story my original characters meet historical characters or celebrities!
A fusion where my original characters are put into a fandom-canon universe but no canon characters appear!
A crossover where my original characters meet me and my friends!
A crossover where my original characters meet my friend's original characters!
A story about recognizable living real people where all the names have been elided or changed!
A story about anthropomorphized objects or concepts!
A story about anthropomorphized *fannish* objects or concepts!
A retelling of a myth or fairy tale where all of the names, the setting, most of the details and the ending are different!
A retelling of a myth or fairy tale to make it work in the framework of my original universe or with my original characters!
An obvious parody/pastiche of a published author's style and subject matter that doesn't reference any of their characters or settings!
A side story to my fanfic epic, about two original characters from the epic, which based only on internal evidence could be set in a non-fannish world!
A novel set in [fandom A] that's all about original characters who live around the world from canon events so the only explicit reference to canon is passing allusions to distant events!
An AU story based around minor OCs from an AU of an AU of an AU that has since been thoroughly jossed!
A novel about characters that started out as fanfic OCs or AUs of canon characters but I have deliberately moved outside the fandom context!
A shared world written by many authors with no "primary" text or "series bible"!
Biblefic!
A slashy story about an angel that draws heavily on traditional Western angelology and eschatology, including [list of canon texts in original sense of canon texts], but is not based on specific text!
A Lovecraftian horror story that mentions the Necronomicon but is otherwise completely original!
A story that is direct commentary or critique of tropes, plots and characterizations specific to a very small subgenre but with all made-up proper names!
A novel that is mostly an original work but in which the Doctor makes a cameo (because he can!)
A professionally published story using other authors' characters and settings that the pro author loudly insists is not fanfic!
(I will stop there before poll gets even longer, but for the record, none of these are hypothetical cases - they are all either things I personally have written, or things other people who identify as fanwriters have done that I could point you to.)
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I don't actually know where the original suggestion to change the rule came from (I should be less lazy and go put in context links, I know), but I suspect it was due to people who write both fanfic and original asking "Why not? Allowing original fic wouldn't be much of a resource drain."
The part about not wanting to have to wade through crappy original fiction came in answer to the question "why not?" :D
(An argument that AO3 needs to stay focused, advocacy-wise, on fanwork, seems like the obvious argument, but I have not seen it being made very much. And since AO3 isn't really advocacy-based - OTW-the-umbrella-group has advocacy branches, but AO3 itself is explicitly non-political - I don't think it's necessarily a winning argument.)
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I don't know how I feel about the likelihood of an original versus a fannish work being bad; I think it depends on the writer (I guess that, should this go ahead, the original work submitted would be written by authors who otherwise specialise in fanfic and have used the archive before) and the main - if not only - reason a particular writer's fanfic could be better than their original stuff lies in the plethora of things s/he doesn't have to write because it's already familiar to readers. If the writer is worth their salt, I should think their original fic would be worth my time.
I just filled out the poll, and while a few questions made me think hard (and then go with the less invalid option, if I'm making sense) I used the non/originality of the world rather than the characters as the main criterion.
Re: [edited for clarity]
I suspect that part of the reason I think of original work as more likely to be bad is that it takes longer to *tell* with original work - if a fan character is OOC, I can tell within about two paragraphs, because I have a baseline, and then I can tab away; with an original character, I have to trust the author for longer, and if the trust was misplaced, I've wasted more time. That's I think close to what
And I think the world vs. characters as criterion for fannishness is a really useful thing to think about, because too often meta approaches it as if fandom was all about the characters. Which it isn't, for everyone, and I know several great people who have largely left fandom because setting-based fanworks get so much less love.
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Seconded so hard. Sturgeon's Law applies across the board.
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You're right, it is, and I shouldn't have alluded to it so lightly (especially in a post that is probably going to end up linked around.)
I don't think original fic is necessarily worse, if only because the average quality of fanfic is pretty bad too. I do think a lot of fan-types aren't as good at, or invested in, filtering out the crap with original fic, and so I suspect the subconscious perception is there, and that "quality" is a significant unspoken subtext to parts of this argument. ...it might have been better off staying unspoken, though.
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